In past years, it has been customary to provide breed sows with a small farrowing house in an open field. Some of these earlier farrowing houses included provisions for protecting the newborn piglets from being crushed by their mother. See U.S. Pat. No. 391,858 issued Oct. 30, 1888 to Randleman et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 436,902 issued Sept. 23, 1890 to Osborn. The sloping floors in the Randleman and Osborn Patents were intended to gravitate the newborn piglets away from their mother/sow and into a protected area where the sow could not reach them. The sloping floors were effective for this purpose but had the disadvantage of causing the sow to move downhill during her labor activity and sometimes resulted in the sow being positioned crosswise or otherwise at a difficult angle for delivery. The sloping floors of the prior art also made it nearly impossible to give obstetric assistance and made it very dangerous for the farmer to enter the small building with the excited and distrustful sow. The sloping floor of the prior art is also disadvantageous in that it is difficult for a sow to get to her feet on a sloping surface and in her thrashing around, she injures the newborn piglets. An additional objection to the prior art farrowing pens of Randlemen and Osborn is that they are made from wood, which have proven disadvantageous because bacteria find refuge in the pores of wood and multiply. The bacteria may be dormant for several years and break out anew.
More recently, it has been found that sows can more efficiently and economically be farrowed inside a building constructed for that purpose. These facilities require the application of increasingly refined principles of breeding, nutrition, physiology and environmental control so that the hogs can be developed to economically produce the maximum quality products. The primary object with swine management is the minimization of environmental factors which are adverse to the swine to provide maximum opportunity for survival and growth of the newborn piglets. Examples of the farrowing houses in use today may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,217,859 issued Aug. 19, 1980 to Herring; U.S. Pat. No. 3,584,603 issued June 15, 1971 to Rutherford; U.S. Pat. No. 3,148,663 issued Sept. 15, 1964 to Conover; U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,578 issued June 29, 1965 to Magruder; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,418,975 issued Dec. 31, 1968 to E. L. Smith. See also: U.S. Pat. No. 3,175,535 issued Mar. 30, 1965 to Rigterink and U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,334 issued Sept. 16, 1975 to Stevenson. The concrete pig pallet of Stevenson replaces the prior art wooden floor in the farrowing pens and is beneficial in helping to eliminate the bacteria which previously germinated in the wooden structures.